1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to portable media devices and, more particularly, to improved features for managing and outputting media items.
2. Description of the Related Art
There exist today many styles of sound machines such as home stereos, car stereos, boom boxes, CD players, and hand-held music players (e.g., MP3) for outputting music. Hand-held music players in particular have become increasingly popular as they allow a user to listen to music on the go. That is, because of their size, they can easily be transported wherever the user travels. In some cases, the devices are attached to the user, as for example, using a belt or clip, thereby making them even easier to transport. In fact, because of their ease of transport, they are commonly used when exercising. The user can wear the music player thereby leaving their hands free to exercise. The iPod® manufactured by Apple Computer of Cupertino, Calif. is one example of a hand-held MP3 player.
In most cases, the music stored in music player is downloaded from a host device such as a personal computer. The personal computer can include music management software that allows a user to sort, store and catalog their music. More particularly, the music management software gives the user the ability to organize their music into playlists, play music, purchase music over the Internet (World Wide Web), run a visualizer to display the music in a visual form, encode or transcode music into different audio formats such as MP3, AIFF, WAY, AAC, and ALE, and transfer music between the personal computer and the music players. iTunes® manufactured by Apple Computer of Cupertino, Calif. is one example of music management software.
A personal computer may also include other software programs associated with music. By way of example, the personal computer may utilize recording software that allows a user to perform, record, and create music. These types of programs typically include features such as instruments, pre-recorded loops, amps, effects and editing tools. GarageBand® manufactured by Apple Computer of Cupertino, Calif., is one example of a music recording program.
The personal computer may also utilize mixing software that allows a user to perform DJ mixing, live remixing, and mix recording using music in various formats such as MP3. This type of software typically performs many functions including mixing, equalizing, cross fading, looping, tempo determination, pitch and tempo adjustment, etc. In order to synchronize two songs during mixing, mixing programs may be configured to analyze the music files and create beat marks for each song (annotate all the beats of the songs so that they can be matched efficiently during mixing). Furthermore, in order to adjust the tempo of a song without affecting pitch, mixing programs may utilize a technique called phase vocoding, which is one of the more powerful methods of manipulating sounds in the frequency domain. Only recently have personal computers had sufficient processing to make real-time phase vocoding a viable proposition. In the past, algorithms for phase vocoding were of such complexity and personal computers were of limited processing power such that it would often require many hours of processing to acquire each second of audio output. Traktor DJ Studio 2.0 manufactured by Native Instruments of Germany is one example of a mixing program.
Although music player systems utilizing a music player and personal computer work well, there is a continuing need for improved features for managing and outputting music.